The morning trickled in through the tiny gap between concrete and garage door; but it was actually his internal chronometer that slowly dragged him out of recharge with a sensation like incessant jabs to the head. Something like a groan or the sigh of hydraulics escaped him. He brought a hand up to his faceplate and noticed that the limb felt uncharacteristically heavy. In fact, all of him felt heavy, and he couldn't quite pinpoint why, even going so far as to worry about the possibility of damaging the floor. He made to move his other arm about then, but noticed a different sort of weight to it. Something on the order of about 150 pounds more than he was expecting.

Hound onlined his optical sensor net. The process was sluggish, and the interference he was experiencing was a almost painful. He attempted to ignore it as he turned his head to see what was on his arm, and-

Whatever viscous sludge that was chugging through his system after last night over-fueling felt like was suddenly vaporized, and his CPU exploded agonizingly to life. Shock claimed his every feature; his mouth fell open. There, prone and fast asleep on his forearm, rear pressed up against his side and arm hanging off, was Astrid. Her clothes were balled up under her head instead of covering her body. Her bra was around her waist.

This scene seemed to cue a mental slide show. Images of varying lecherousness, skewed by a thick haze of static, played out in the forefront of his processors like, for the lack of a better term, a car accident. It was then he noticed that a finger on his free hand was thinly coated in an oily fluid, and that there was a peculiar organic smell thick in the air.

"Oh dear Primus..."

Hound wanted to leap up to his feet, but he had to wake her first. He didn't want to. That meant having to face her. Panic began to settle on him like thick dust, and as his gaze turned once more to the human, he began to shake his head from side to side as though the repetitious movement could somehow undo what had happened. There was a shuddering in his spark; hit joints stiffened. What was he going to do? What was she going to do? What if anyone else found out? What really happened?

Was it as bad as his memory files suggested? The mech groaned, aiming to massage the bridge of his olfactory sensors, but recoiled his hand when the smell-her smell-reminded him just where those fingers had been.

Brow ridge furrowed. His mouth, so used to curling upward in countless grins and smiles, was now yanked downward in a distressed frown. Disgust mingled with panic, mingled with anger. Who was he disgusted at? Him? Her? The circumstances?

Either way, him. Definitely him.

How did he let this happen? Vector Sigma, this was all his fault, wasn't it? He wasn't so much of a pushover that he couldn't say no, was he? The mech looked down at himself, spotting numerous whole and partial hand prints about his chest, thigh, and hip plates. He suddenly wanted nothing more than to crawl inside himself and rust away into nothing.

"How did this even happen?" he lamented once more, staring at the ceiling.

The most damning question, however, was the one he was avoiding most.

Did he, or did he not in some way want what took part? Or was it the high-grade that made him think that he wanted it? It didn't even matter who came onto who first... from what he could piece together, they both practically did it at the same time. But then there was the question of whether or not Astrid had done it solely from intoxication or not, too. Not to mention that this... this wasn't the first time that he'd fooled around with an organic. Not a human, but... but... there were others.

More images flooded his head. A Cemerian on Rhydolus; a Hhknunnl'e on Ggeng 4; a Vinzakka on an Autobot outpost in the Happlan System; another Cemerian someplace else.

He... he'd tried having relationships with his own kind, but something about them was lacking. There was a sensation that Hound could not only feel, but craved, and no other Cybertronian seemed privvy to its existence. Not being able to explain to a spark-mate why you still feel woefully incomplete? It gets old fast.

So he chased organics when no one was looking.

But those experiments were just that, really. I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. Quick, impersonal; massaging away a dull ache that he knew would always come back eventually. His problem was chronic, and an eon ago he learned to accept that he would be stuck treating the symptoms for the rest of his long, miserable life; that there was no cure.

But this wasn't just some tryst... w-was it?

Unlike the others, Hound genuinely, unabashedly liked her. He knew enough about her to admire her. To be in awe of her accomplishments. To appreciate her hobbies. To understand her worldview.

Was there some shred of truth to what had happened at all?

There had to have been.

It had to have been there all along, in some small way, and getting drunk only let it out in a way that neither of them had the willpower to control. Hound recalled memories from their drives. Was it the feeling of her ass on his seat or her conversation that he enjoyed more? The last dregs of concentrated energon being flushed from his system was making it difficult to think that hard.

But the mech couldn't stay in his head forever. The day had to begin at some point.

"Astrid," he whispered, turning to her once again.

Nothing.

"Astrid." Less feeble this time.

Still, nothing.

Hound risked lifting his arm in the air. He did so carefully as he sat up and brought her closer. Distantly he noticed that his first inclination was to bring her closer to his chest, but he knew better than to initiate any more physical contact than was necessary, especially given the state of her clothes.

"Astrid, wake up."

He nudged her shoulder with the opposite hand, but it turned into a slow stroke over her upper arm. This motion seemed to stir her.

The human groaned, long and broken. Her arm painfully lifted from where it hung to scratch her scalp before hefting her head up to look around. When her gaze locked with his, he noticed that her eyes were puffy and bloodshot. The sight made him ache everywhere.

"What's going on?" she mumbled groggily. "Why are we in the garage?"

His vocal processors seized up for a moment. "We need to talk," he replied at length.

The look she gave him was ignorant and confused, but after attempting to stretch, her ball of clothes fell to the floor and she was made suddenly aware of her nudity. For a second time he saw the light of realization catch her like a deer in headlights, and her eyes shot open in a sudden sobriety. His frown deepened.

Astrid's eyes darted around wildly: from his face, to his chest, to his feet, to the floor, to the discarded bottle of tequila, to the empty energon cubes. Then back to him. Her expression was pleading, distraught, and he could tell she was trying to form words in her contracting throat, but was failing. Instead, she shook her head vigorously.

"No, no..." She began to tremble. "Put me down."

"I-"

"Put me down now."

Emotion laced her voice, and Hound did as she asked. As soon as she was a few feet from the floor, she leaped off him, gathered her wad of clothing and frantically put it back on. As she bent to pick up the rest, she spied a small bottle nearby, and slowly picked it up. The label, he saw, said K-Y Ultragel. Her face morphed into a twisted show of her horror.

"Oh fuck me," she murmured, throwing the bottle away from her.

"Astrid..."

Still shaking her head and giving him one last look, she ran from the garage.

"Astrid wait!" The attempt was futile, he knew. He sat in silence for a few moments before cursing aloud. "Fraggit all to hell!" Hound brought his fist to the floor in sudden frustration and regretted it when he saw the cracks.

There had to be something he could do about this! This couldn't possibly be the end of the line... for her to cut him off was an outcome so terrible that he didn't even want to think about it.

Hound shoved his shame and self-loathing aside with every ounce of willpower that he could muster. I've gotta fix this..!

Sending a signal to the motor responsible for the garage door, the thing came to life and opened. Light flooded in and he stepped out. Standing up gave his gyroscope and equilibritory unit a run for their money, and he had to grab the eave on the garage to steady himself for a moment. He took this opportunity to pinpoint her location in the house, however, and as soon as he was able to, squeezed into the backyard, not particularly concerned for the attention he might be warranting. He came to a small frosted window high on the wall, and heard water running. The window wasn't closed all the way, and steam was billowing out through the slight gap. He couldn't see through the glass with his color spectrum sensors, so he listened intently for a moment instead of activating some other array that would let him see through the wall. The mech wasn't able to discern any noise other than the hiss of the shower. Gathering up his courage, he lightly tapped on the window.

"Astrid..."

"What the hell do you want? Just leave me alone!"

The sudden outburst was surprising and left him stung.

"Can we talk?" he said, putting his face close to the opening. "I'm... I'm not judging you, o-or..."

"I really don't give a shit," she hissed. "Just go away! I've fucked up my life enough without your help already. I don't need a goddamn giant fucking alien making me... making things more complicated than they already are." She pauses here. "So just go. Go and do whatever it is that you people do and leave me to do whatever it is that I'm doing now."

Those words sliced him open like a high-tensile energy blade. He couldn't help but recoil from the icy blast, taking a step back and setting his jaw.

"If that's what you want," Hound said to himself. "Fine. I'm out of here."

The 5-meter mech returned to the driveway and transformed. With angry roar of his engine, he sped down the street, heading for the nearest highway.

The haul to Yellowstone seemed to take forever. It was about eight hours of solid driving for the anger to go away, and by the time he reached the park, the Jeep was a silent wreck. It was about four in the morning when he decided that he just needed a rest. Over a day's worth of stress had taken its toll, so Hound pulled to the side of the road and went into an uneasy recharge for a few hours.

"Hey, buddy. Some place to be catchin' zees, dontcha think?" Came a familiar voice. An arm (one of similar size and weight) came to casually rest on his roof and fingers began to strum. "You're just askin' for a ranger to go ape, you know."

Hound groaned and shrugged off Beachcomber's arm.

"Hey, now! What got you so creamed? You're normally a pretty cool bent-eight, man."

"I just don't feel well, Beachcomber." Hound mumbled, sinking down on his shocks.

"Whatever you're sellin', I ain't buyin'. Now I'll be right here until you spill and spill honest."

The Jeep sighed and began the cumbersome process of transforming. He remained on his knees for a few moments when finished before standing up and swayed a little from a circuit-ache.

"Can we walk and talk?" he asked weakly.

"Bummed cat gets to call it."

Hound really didn't know where to start. He was slouched over and staring at the ground with arms folded over his chest. "You remember when I got called over to Tahoe couple of months ago?" he ventured uneasily.

"Mmhmm." Beachcomber nodded his blue head as they walked along the gravel road.

"Well, some stuff happened, and I ended up becoming friends with this human."

"Mmhmm."

"She was smart, and cute, and loves being outside, and-"

"Hey, whoa, king's X, buddy." He makes a 'time-out' gesture with his hands. "This goin' where I think it's goin'?

Hound's spark chamber, already feeling like a tin can that's been kicked around, just got one more squeeze. "Alright, you know what, let's talk about this some other time."

"Hey! Alright, alright, I'll can it. Lay it on me, no questions asked."

The Jeep cast a sidelong glance at the off-roader before heaving a great sigh and continuing. "I rescued her from a landslide. That was it at first; just like the other times I do work with SAR. But she... she reached out to me after. She thought I was human."

"Awkward."

"Yeah, well... I revealed myself to her. Surprise! I'm actually a giant metal alien guy!"

"...which doesn't often go over well with the civvies."

"She... got over it pretty quick. Anyways, I felt bad for her. And I mean real bad. You know how a rancher is supposed to put down a horse that's broken a leg? I could see in her eyes that she felt like a lame horse." Hound shook his head, hurting some more. "Waiting for someone to put her down."

"And?"

"In a way, that's what happened," he muttered angrily. "She lost her job, and with a jacked-up leg, there's just no getting back to doing what she's been doing. Not for a long time. And until then, rent's still due, gas still needs to be put in the car. But maybe worse than that was that she couldn't run off into the hills to at least relax. You know, she told me that she goes through bivvy sacks like toilet paper." He wasn't sure if Beachcomber knew what that meant, or what a bivvy sack even was, but that almost didn't matter right now. "Sure, that's hyperbole, but point is, she was out there almost every weekend."

"And now she's not."

"And now she's not," Hound repeated solemnly.

"But that's not exactly what's bummin' you out, is it?

The Jeep let out a long drag of hot air from his vents and looked off into the distance. "Portland was a shit-show," he said quietly. "One of the seekers took down a bridge. A whole slaggin' bridge, man. That city is nothing but bridges! The reservoir got hit and an entire historic subdivision was flooded out. The river needs to be dredged from all the pieces of buildings that got blown into it... it was just a mess. The fight was long, dirty, and awful. I'm sure everyone there hates our fraggin' guts now. Anyways, I had to get away."

"Hmmm," his companion rumbled. "So that's why you were runnin' the hamster wheel in your own head before that."

"Yeah, I guess." He shrugged. "The fight pushed me over the edge. Four humans killed, hundreds injured, Tracks, Cliffjumper, and Inferno all wound up in stasis-lock, and municipal damage figures were in the 8 and 9 digits."

"So you went to go see this human of yours."

Hound nodded. He was beginning to feel sick to his spark just thinking about it again. "I headed south and didn't stop until I got to her place," he started. "There were people over, so I parked down the block and waited until they were all gone. No way I was going to knock on the door and introduce myself. Not even on a good day is that an idea that'll end well."

"That's just how things are, man."

"So I waited 'til everyone left and went up the driveway. She came out... and..."

"And what?"

"I don't know. There was something different about her right off the bat. I don't really know what it was... she'd been drinking, but that wasn't it. There was something else. If I were another 'bot, I might've been able to tell, but I was just feeling like such shit and wanted the company..."

"Mmhmm."

"All I wanted to do was unwind. That's it. She, on the other hand. She wanted to keep drinking." Hound paused here. "I figured that there'd be no harm in having a cube of high-grade, so I did."

"I'm hep, man, I get it."

"She was just acting weird though. Her body language was changing with every sip she took and... I dunno, I thought my imagination was getting the better of me at that point, so I stopped.

"Or at least I wanted to. I figured that I would stay until she went into recharge and just make my way here, but I guess that wasn't in the cards. I asked her to come over and sit by me since she was there, chugging this nasty stuff off in the corner by herself like it was a bad habit. Well, she stood up and walked over rather... rather..." He was trying to pick words that wouldn't make him sound like a fool. "Dramatically." He shrugged weakly. "I didn't want to over-fuel, especially if I was heading back here in an hour or two. But she insisted I waste myself with her. She even did a toast." Hound clenched his jaw servos, dreading the next parts.

"And?"

"And... I don't know what came over me. It must have been the energon, but... I did a second cube."

"Dag, yo... just how processed was this brew, now?"

"Wheeljack's strongest," he admitted shamefully. "But things seriously started to go downhill after that. I felt this really strong compulsion to just... just feel her against me." Hound paused. "I don't know where it came from," he lied. "Next thing I know she's kissing me and I'm doing it back, and..."

"That's it? I thought necking wasn't a huge deal to the little cats."

Hound's shoulder sunk. "Apparently the night was just getting started."

"Dang, daddy-o, never pegged you for a kinky type!" he chuckled. Hound visibly stiffened. "You always seemed to be, like... a function-driven mech. Not much interested in the bonding stuff."

"I was interested, though!" he blurted out, catching himself far too late. Hound covered his face with his hands and shook his head as the silence between them grew longer. "That's... that's not what I meant. I..."

"Sometimes you can be a real goof, you know, man? You could never lie worth a damn, but shoot, you keep tryin'."

That's it, then? He was easy to read for everyone else but him? Part of him was getting angry that Beachcomber seemed to think he knew him better than he knew himself, but...

But what, you thick, miserable mech?

I... I wanted her, didn't I. I...

"I guess I wanted something more than just to experiment," he says, more to himself than not. "It's my fault for not knowing how I felt. It's my fault for waiting for the high-grade to get flowing to..."

"...to make your move?"

"Yeah," he said, listless, confounded by his own logic. "I waited until the worst possible moment to make my move."

"If it's any con-so-la-tion, sounds like you weren't the only one."

Hound knit his brows in thoughtful frustration. She made a move too...

"Are you saying that she might've... wanted it too?"

"Look, guy, you're gonna have to ask her that yourself. I'm no psychic-hell, I'm not even a shrink-so you're gonna get no easy answers from me. What about the broad, though? Didn't just leave her hangin' like a no-good overload-n'-run sort of mech, right?"

Hound shot him an icy glare. "Primus, Beachcomber, of course not!" He folded his arms and stared straight ahead. "I woke up, remembered what happened, got her up, and she flipped out at me once she came-to. Ran into the house and refused to even speak to me."

"Hoosh, man, that's harsh... but can you blame her?"

"...no." Hound made a small noise, thinking about what must've been going through her head that morning. "I just want my friend back, Beachcomber. I can go without thinking about her like that if I have to, without touching her, whatever." The green mech paused, recalling the worst memory he had on file. "You should have seen her... the look on her face when she realized what'd happened. I was supposed to help her get her life back together, not frag it up even more."

"I think you're beatin' yourself up, man. I understand, you know, that you shouldn't a had that second cube, but then she shouldn't have been gettin' blitzed into oblivion either. I think it might be fair to say that it was both your fault for this mess."

"That doesn't make me feel any better."

"Alright, man, listen here." The blue and gray mech put a hand on Hound's shoulder to stop him so they could talk eye to eye. "I may not be your normal go-to love guru, but I know a thing or two about what goes on in people's heads n' stuff. Now, I might be readin' between the lines a little too much, but it seems to me that while this chick had something botherin' her real bad for a while... and when drinkin' her sorrows away didn't do the trick, she turned to you. The last, forbidden resort. I don't think that this problem was something that you could have done anything about to begin with, but I don't think she was hip to that."

Hound stopped for a moment to think, think, think... and then kicked at the gravel. Tiny pebbles went flying everywhere. "How could I be so stupid," he said, defeated. "How didn't I see that? It was right there the whole time... and I didn't see it. She was coming to me for help, and I was too stupid to realize how to give it."

"Naw, naw, man, that ain't what I'm sayin'. I'm thinkin' that, believe it or not, you were in the same buh-boat as her, you know?" Hound cast Beachcomber a weary look before turning his optics back to the ground. The buggy laid a hand on the Jeep's shoulder for emphasis as he continued. "All that rigmarole that you been dealin' with put you in the exact same place, man. You were going to her for help, and she didn't know it." He finished off with a pat to Hound's shoulder plates. "The universe is a hard teacher, man, and it doesn't spare anybody. We're all like, little bugs runnin' around the grand machine."

There was a hefty pause as it all sank in. Beachcomber, even with his slow-as-molasses jive about the universe, was making the most sense that Hound had heard in a while.

"How do I fix this?"

"That's where I stop and say, you gotta do this on your own, man. That landslide was way more than just dirt and rocks, you dig? It was a big pile of all kinds of slag, man, and it just happened to come down on the both of you at the same time. Maybe you gotta help each other out of it. At the same time though, maybe not. That's what you gotta find out."